Concurrent error detection of fault-based side-channel cryptanalysis of 128-bit symmetric block ciphers

Abstract

Fault-based side channel cryptanalysis is very effective against symmetric and asymmetric encryption algorithms. Although straightforward hardware and time redundancy based concurrent error detection (CED) architectures can be used to thwart such attacks, they entail significant overhead (either area or performance). In this paper we investigate systematic approaches to low-cost, low-latency CED for symmetric encryption algorithms based on the inverse relationship that exists between encryption and decryption at algorithm level, round level and operation level and develop CED architectures that explore the trade-off between area overhead, performance penalty and error detection latency. The proposed techniques have been validated on FPGA implementations of AES finalist 128-bit symmetric encryption algorithms.